


Haunted

by rabidsamfan



Series: hauntings [1]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:25:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Maiwand, Watson is still facing the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted

**Dreaming men are haunted men**  
\--_ Stephen Vincent Benet_

\---

Shortly before the first anniversary of the battle of Maiwand, I was summoned to Buckingham Palace, along with the other survivors of that debacle, to receive a medal for my service in the campaign. For a few hours I stood again with men whose eyes saw the same ghosts and whose tongues fell into the same easy mishmash of Hindu and Dari and Army slang. The 66th ceased to exist that day, officially, the survivors being pulled into a new regiment, and while no one could say that we were content to know that a glorious defeat would write the end of an honorable history, at least a new beginning seemed better than being scattered to the four winds.

And yet, as a medical officer, I stood in a peculiar position, one which was only emphasized as we were marched in to stand before the queen. With the reorganization of the Medical Service I had no formal tie to the Berkshires -- we stood apart, Surgeon-Major Preston and I, with the other medical personnel, and felt keenly the absence of Murray and our other English orderlies, all of whom had been assigned to hospitals in India in the interim. The ceremony was soon over, and I was left restless and dissatisfied. There had been great comfort in being among men who understood, as no civilian could, the exigencies of war, however much the thought of returning to battle made my scars ache and my dreams worsen. A taste of that comradeship had awakened a hunger for more, as a touch of curry stirs a desire for all the spices of the Orient.

I purchased a kitbag and stocked it with instruments from pawnshops and assorted nostrums from the local chemist, and then took to trying to resurrect my professional skills in anticipation of the medical review that might somehow find me fit enough to send back to my duties. Fortunately the free clinics were desperate for volunteers. By early July it was clear that the summer would be one of the hottest in memory, and the sweltering weather doubled the number of collapses in the poorer districts, and tripled the incidence of febrile convulsions in very young children due to bad food. So many of the parents had no real way to keep food from spoilage that I found myself advising mothers to keep their babes on the breast until the weather turned cool. We bathed our patients in tepid water, again and again, and thanked mercy for the clinical thermometers which gave us some certainty that our efforts were not in vain. There was no money in it, of course; my only compensation lay in knowing by the end of the day that the lives I had saved outnumbered the lives I could not.

Holmes was not nearly as inured to the heat as I was, nor were his clients, and every day that the mercury soared saw him idle and irritable. As the dog days reached their worst, an intractable silence from my fellow lodger made me glad that I had stumbled upon alternatives to provide the companionship and work which were my best cure for the melancholy that was never far from me that season. I rose early and worked late, avoiding newspapers until the days bled into one another. The 27th passed in a haze, but the grief would not go, and I worked on, never dreaming that come August my life would once again be interrupted by catastrophe.

\---

I was walking home, not long before sunset, on the second day of that month, and had no sooner passed the entrance of the Gower street station when I felt something like a bomb going off beneath the pavement. For a moment I had hopes it was an earthquake, but then the eerie echoes of the train whistles came up the ventilation shafts, crying disaster. The heat had warped the rails of the underground, and one train of two had slewed into the wall of the tunnel and then rebounded against the other, just west of the crowded platform. Luckily, a bright shopkeeper understood the immediate need and provided those of us who were willing to help find and free the victims trapped below with a boxful of candles, one of which I lit before descending into that merciless, fœtid hell.

I stumbled home in the first dim light of morning, reeking of carbolic and blood and soot. By some miracle the bolt had not been thrown and my key was sufficient to allow me entrance, but I was so exhausted that the steps up to our sitting room were beyond me. I sat on the lowest of them instead and leaned against the wall with my eyes closed, waiting for some measure of energy to return. My left shoulder ached incessantly. I had not done any amputations since Afghanistan, and I had forgotten how much strength they required from both arms.

I fell into relentless contemplation of the scenes I had just witnessed. The oppressive heat had called to mind the carnage of Maiwand again and again as we sifted through the human and mechanical wreckage in the subway, and the darkness had held as many terrors as the long retreat to Candahar. Worse, the fresh calamity promised to haunt me near as often as the old. The accident had been an accident, and not the product of malice, thank God, but there had been no children on the battleground.

"Doctor?"

I startled, having been too wrapped up in my bleak thoughts to notice Holmes coming down the stairs, and bit back a curse when the movement jarred my scar. "Yes," I managed after a moment.

He was clad in nothing but his dressing gown, and barefoot, as if he'd risen in haste from his bed. As he crouched beside me the folds fell open to reveal more than a mere glimpse of his long, muscular legs, but I was in such wretched condition I scarce noticed. "You _were_ at Gower Street," he said. "I went looking for you, but there was such chaos aboveground as well as below that the police had barred access for three blocks 'round the station entrance."

"I'm sorry," I mumbled. There had been no chance to send word, and in truth I had had no expectation that he would even notice my absence. His own black moods required solitude and time to overcome -- so he had told me upon our earliest acquaintance and experience had proven him correct. Given the state I had last left him in I had expected another two days would pass before he found his way out of his depression. "I didn't mean to worry you."

"That's all right." One long hand hovered for a moment near my forehead, as if he could gauge the heat coming off of my bare skin. "You've lost your hat."

"Yes." I'd lost my wallet too, to some opportunistic young pickpocket. Not that it would profit him much. I closed my eyes, trying to summon up the will to move.

Something tugged on my sleeve. "Here," Holmes said. "Drink this."

From somewhere he had found a carafe of water and a glass. And _ice_. A few chips of it floated in the carafe, clinking softly against the sides with each movement. I stared at the moisture collecting on the outside surface of the vessel, wondering how on earth he had procured ice when the poor clinic had not been able to find any for days, not for love nor money.

"Here," he said again, settling beside me and bringing the cool glass to my lips. "You need to drink a little."

Not since Peshawar had anyone cosseted me in such fashion, but so much did I want the water that my pride made no objection. Holmes' hands were cooler than my own, and steadier, and he controlled my first few sips until it became apparent that the water would stay down. "That's better," he said as I revived somewhat. "Still thirsty?"

"Yes." _Always_. At times I felt as if I should never completely wash the dust of Afghanistan out of my throat.

As soon as I'd emptied a second tumblerful, he curled an arm around me to draw me upright. I would have allowed that too, had not my shoulder protested. "No. Please."

"You weren't on the train," he said, as he deftly switched his grasp from my left elbow to my waist and raised me to my feet. It was a statement, not a question, though I had no idea how he had deduced the difference. "But you've been hurt."

"It's nothing. Just my arm," I told him as I tried to find my balance. "I'll be all right once I've had a bite to eat." Truth to tell, I was not hungry, but I dreaded the thought of sleep. A hundred nightmares were lurking, and I knew it. "There's no point in going to bed," I added, defensively, when he raised a skeptical eyebrow. "It's nearly morning."

His gaze flickered over me, and I saw his jaw tighten on some injudicious comment. But then he nodded acquiescence to my intransigence. "Mrs. Hudson won't be awake any time soon," he warned me. "But that's just as well. You'll have time to clean up."

I didn't have the strength to wield a washcloth, nor yet the strength to argue, but as I clearly couldn't get up the stairs to our sitting room without assistance, I made no protest. To my dismay, however, once we had managed the stairs he steered a course for the bathing room. "Holmes," I began, but he forestalled me.

"You're filthy, and you've got blood everywhere -- including your hair. One look and our good landlady won't be making you breakfast, she'll be sending round for a physician. If you'd wanted one, you'd have had the sense to go to hospital."

I shuddered at the thought. Every hospital in the vicinity must still be echoing with the cries of the injured and the dying. "I'm all right," I told him.

"Not yet," he said calmly. "But you will be." He settled me on the closed commode and went about lighting the gas and the geyser and fetching towels and my dressing gown and nightshirt. I waited, too weary to do more than fend off sleep. In a few moments he was back, and kneeling before me as he tugged off my boots and stockings. The tiles of the floor felt cool beneath my soles and I closed my eyes to better enjoy the sensation as Holmes moved higher and began to unfasten the buttons of my waistcoat. "It's just as well that this was your second best suit," he observed conversationally, "because there's no saving it. I doubt even dyeing it black will hide the stains."

"Cold salt water for blood," I told him. That one I knew, even in my sleep.

"And what for soot, and tar, and rust, and...," he frowned and touched a dark patch on my knee. "Coffee?"

I shook my head and muttered a denial. I would have remembered coffee.

He rose and swiftly helped me draw off jacket and waistcoat, but slowed his movements when it came to my shirt. Ever since Maiwand I had had some difficulty with pulling my shirts off, and even the longer placket which my tailor had decided upon was insufficient to prevent pain when the wound was irritated. To my surprise, Holmes seemed to know this already, though I had never yet undressed in his presence. He eased the cloth free of my good arm and head first and only then slipped it away from the bad shoulder. I wondered, distantly, what he would make of the livid scars on my back and the misshapen ruin of my scapula but I could not hold the thought. The darkness behind my eyelids swirled with small points of light, like candles in a smoke-filled tunnel, like the glimmers of stars in a merciless night, and the flicker of gunfire from the villages and ravines.

"No!" I was awake again, standing upright, and Holmes was holding me from behind, my arms pinioned to my sides as if to prevent a wild blow. I could feel my trousers sliding down my hips, the sweat running down unimpeded to my abdomen.

"Easy, Watson, easy. Try to stay awake a little longer." My fellow-lodger was still calm, still deliberate in his movements as he freed one hand to finish working the buttons of my fly. Beneath my linens I felt my member grow tauter, responding to his touch. I brought my hand up to meet his, to take over the task, and he made a soft sound that I could not identify as impatience or laughter. "It's all right, Doctor. I don't mind."

"I can bathe myself," I mumbled, still leaning against his strength.

"You'll drown if you try," he asserted, and now I could hear the amusement in his voice, and feel an answering trickle of heat against my lower back. "Just let me do the work." He'd managed the buttons, and I felt my trousers drop to puddle at my ankles. The knot of my underlinens was trickier, but I was still so thin that it was no great matter to tug them downwards past any obstacles until they too fell. My prick sprang to half-mast in the cool of the air, and had I had any strength for it I might have been embarrassed, but that Holmes seemed to find nothing untoward about the situation. "Lift your foot clear," he told me, moving his knee up behind mine to compel me to comply. "And the other... that's right. Now into the tub with you."

The enamel felt cold under bare skin -- too cold indeed, for I began to shiver, and I was glad when Holmes started the water from cistern and geyser and it began to bubble up warm from the drainhole. He knelt beside the tub and took up washcloth and soap, and I closed my eyes as he set about cleaning my hair and face. He had such a gentle touch -- not like some of the orderlies at Peshawar, who had slopped water carelessly and scrubbed roughly as they searched out traces of the diarrhea which was the inevitable consequence of enteric fever. There'd been one fellow who seemed to glory in making his charges sob with fright, or scream, as the baffled civilians had screamed in the black darkness of tangled metal and wood so far beneath the cobblestones. It had taken hours to find them all, to make sure that no one would be left behind in the dark, and some of the worst hurt had failed even as I sought out their injuries, their dead hands clutching at my sleeves.

"No!" In twisting away from the memories I lost what little balance I had, and skidded down in the tub, striking my bad arm hard against the tub wall and only saved from a mouthful of soapy water by Holmes' hand behind my neck. Tears sprung into my eyes, as much from fright as pain, and I gulped for air, trying desperately to regain my composure.

Holmes' lips had gone thin and tight across his face, and his eyes were dark with thought. "This isn't working," he declared as he maneuvered me back to a sitting position. He stood and divested himself of his dressing gown, hanging it on the hook by the door. He was naked underneath, and nearly as white as a marble statue except for the dark thatch of hair at the base of his belly and the blush of curiosity lightly swelling his cock and balls. "With your permission?" he said, but did not wait for a reply before clambering into the tub and positioning himself behind me. "It's a good thing that the late Mr. Hudson was a man of noble proportions," he observed, as he arranged his long legs like the arms of an overstuffed chair to either side. "This is much more efficient."

"Efficient?" I echoed as he settled me back to lean against his chest. My heart was still racing, and I could not say if the cause was the lingering shock of nearly drowning or something else again. No one had held me like this in far too long.

"Yes," he said. "And more comfortable too. I was getting a knot in my back leaning over the side of the bath like that."

"I'm sorry," I said, although I was not sure what I was apologizing for.

"Think nothing of it, old fellow," Holmes said softly near my ear. He finished plying the washcloth along my left side and transferred it to his other hand, laying his left arm protectively across my chest. I let my head fall back against his shoulder, let my eyes close again as I allowed myself to feel the smoothness of his skin beneath me and the sweep of his hand moving down below the waterline. He cupped his hand around my balls and I stiffened, reaching out and feeling my fingers stub against the geyser handle. "Easy," Holmes whispered. "Easy. You need better dreams, anyone can see that. And prostitutes are expensive and inconvenient and I am already here."

"That's what Daniel always said," I told him, as I relaxed, remembering another pair of arms, and another hand running languidly along my shaft.

"Daniel?"

"He was a subaltern in the Fusiliers," I murmured, though Daniel had been part and parcel of my life long before either of us had ever been beckoned by the sound of a drum. "And a friend. But he died."

"In Afghanistan?" Holmes wondered softly, still letting his hand explore.

I shook my head. "Before I ever reached Bombay," I meant to answer, but I have no recollection of whether I did so. Not even the knowledge that I should somehow reciprocate for Holmes' kindness could keep me waking. My mind had gone back to a summer I should never have forgotten, when death had been something that happened to old men and not to boys of less than twenty. The dreams welcomed me, and I was glad to go.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a magnificent piece of artwork by spacefall over [here.](http://spacefall.livejournal.com/638209.html)


End file.
